explodingcat Reviews

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Nice moments but essentially rubbish

[3/10 · 16 February 2007]

The movie's fantasy scenes are great, and the best bit of the movie. But the rest of it was very much story by numbers. In fact it was melodramatic pap that wrote itself. The good guys were oh so good, the bad guy oh so bad, the characters clichéd as far as they could be, it was in the end kind of silly, which for a subject as bold as a civil war, is not good. The main girl also had more than a touch of Anne Frank about her visually speaking, which may have been just me, but again added to the trite feeling of the overall movie

But the fantasy scenes were really good, and if the movie focused more on these, rather than the rudimentary main storyline, it would have been better.

The Last King of Scotland (2006)

Lacks power

[3/10 · 16 February 2007]

This movie really didn't do it for me. I knew going into the movie that Idi Amin was a ruthless dictator, and i left the movie knowing about as much as when i went in. The film completely failed to tell you what was going on in the country, it was touched on, but never really engaged. And this was the same of the whole movie it was great on touching on things but failed to go any deeper.

The film suffers from several flaws. One it is a fiction involving real characters, which always is a dubious mix. Second the main character, the Scot, is unlikeable and unsympathetic. Third the end of the movie has no tension, and is hastily put together. Further the chronology of the movie is completely indecipherable. It apparently takes place over 5 years, but it could be several weeks for all we know.

The movie truly fails in that it fails to tell the story of Amin, or the people he killed. At the end of the movie i didn't feel any emotion at all. In fact if you didn't know any better he just seemed like a generous bloke with a bit of a temper. The film makers needed to do better than this if they are to tackle such a huge subject, and instead of a study on mass murder we are given fluff about a graduate position gone sour.

The Take (2004)

Very Badly made one sided documentary

[1/10 · 10 December 2006]

The little dudes taking on the big dudes. We all like to see it, and we love to see them win.

The problem with this documentary is not so much the content but the lack of it. The story of Argentina is told by the film makers, and by the factory workers. Great, but they are not really experts, are they? An academic would have been far more credible. Unfortunately the film makers were loyal to ideas close to their hearts, and they should have been loyal to the truth, wherever that lies, I'm not sure as the film was partisan, to the point of cartoon. Unfortunately i left the cinema thinking it only told me half the story, and as such I couldn't trust it.

Facts were replaced with chants. There was one scene of a riot which tried to make the rioters out to be heroes and the police out to be violent oppressors (rather than people doing a pretty fundamental and difficult job already without having a bunch of people throwing bricks at them)which didn't wash well with me, and the difficult issue of the workers taking a bunch of very expensive equipment was never really explored. Was it intended that those who paid for it would be compensated, or was it to be donated to them in the interests of trying to keep a business running? One of many questions never answered.

The world isn't black and white. This documentary made it out to be just that, and as such, insults an audience which knows better

Cremaster 3 (2002)

Don't believe the hype

[3/10 · 23 September 2006]

I just watched Cremaster 3, and although i really wanted to like it, watching it proved, for the most part, to be more a trial than a thrill. I didn't even try to extract a meaning from what was going on, i just wanted to be bombarded with something thought provoking, or entertaining. I didn't get that. When you have no narrative, one has to rely on visual brilliance. For the most part it didn't deliver. The giant's causeway and Chystler building scenes were very tedious, the scene in the bar irritated me to no end. Scenes dragged on ( and on) and i was all but ready to walk out. Thankfully the scenes in the Guggenhiem museum were far more entertaining, and so my patience was somewhat rewarded (I was real surprised to see Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law, I'm a big hardcore fan). The Guggenhiem scenes, as good as they are, didn't make up for the rest of it.

Satisfy your curiosity by all means, and if you want to see it, go in with an open mind, you may love it. But at the same time, be prepared for an endurance test.

Ranpo jigoku (2005)

Nasty, Boring, Pretentious Rubbish

[1/10 · 2 December 2005]

I had the misfortune of seeing this one at a Japanese film festival. The movie comes off as a pretentious sexual fantasy of a person who gets off on rape and sexual violence. Not exactly entertainment. The movie is completely hollow, what it has to say sounds very poetic but lacks substance, and all four stories are devoid of a compelling storyline. As a result, it feels as if you are watching pornography, very well shot yet very twisted and very very boring pornography ( unless you are seriously poorly adjusted, in which case you may get off on it, and should seek professional help). I don't want to enter into the what is art and what is pornography debate, i think sexual violence has its place in cinema, i thought Once Were Warriors, Irreversible and even The Hills have Eyes ( the original one) were excellent movies that to different extents contained sexual violence, in different contexts. The difference is those movies (well they are excellent and this is pathetic that is one difference) deplored sexual violence this seems to applaud it, and even enjoy it. The film gets nastier and more twisted as it goes along. The second story about mirrors and a string of mysterious murders is like an extremely substandard X files episode. The third story about a man with no arms, legs, or ability to speak being tortured but his wife wearing bondage gear, isn't my idea of a good time. Extremely stupid, really long ( 2 hours and fifteen minutes) and extremely boring. This a complete waste of time. Don't bother.

Crash (I) (2004)

Overdone

[2/10 · 19 October 2005]

Racial problems exist everywhere, and why they do and what troubles they manifest has been done before and done better. This movie has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, every character ( of which there are way too many to flesh out completely, leaving them as 2D cut - outs) acts illogically and be in the middle of a monologue about race relations when we meet them. Subtlety is sorely lacking in this self righteous piece. The movie also falls into the trap of fitting most of the characters into racial stereotypes, stereotypes which made me cringe. This is race relations complete with car chases, explosions and ridiculous unlikely coincidences. Heavyhanded and overdone, this movie ends up taking an issue which is pretty critical and making it near laughable.

The Razor's Edge (2005)

Utterly Pointless

[2/10 · 3 October 2005]

To the credit of this short film, it was well shot, and deservedly won the prize for best cinematography at tropfest. Having said that, the film is a pointless waste of time. The movie is a fight scene. We have no reason why this hobo is fighting a whole bunch of people, or why they are fighting him. No motivation is given. So without this information there is no point to this movie. At all. Further we didn't know whether the anonymous henchmen were just completely hopeless fighters or whether this hobo was indeed Chuck Norris. As tropfest movies go this was definitely the filler movie. I and every other person in the Domain that evening was wondering what we had just seen. It took a minute to set in just what, exactly, we had witnessed. 7 minutes of crud. Crud in a very pure form. Pointless crud. 7 minutes i'll never ever ever get back. I and all the other people watching the movie that night were robbed of 7 minutes of our lifetime. Criminal.

Idaho Transfer (1973)

Fails to capitalise on a good premise.

[3/10 · 3 October 2005]

The premise of this movie is quite good. Young scientists journey into the future to try and work out what wiped out humanity. The project gets shut down, and so the young kids go into the future and are stranded. OK so that is the the premise. The mark of a good writer is not so much to come up with such a premise, but to know what to do with it, how to finish it off, how to string it out into a compelling story. This is where this movie fails. After the truly engaging start, it plateaus and not much happens, in fact, there is very little explanation as to what the kids are trying to do (except go to Portland, and why not?). So we are left with a long stretch of very little for most of the movie. The ending is completely ridiculous, and it is worth staying around for, just for a good laugh.

An interesting failure of a film.

DEFCON-4 (1985)

The apocalypse better not suck as much as this did

[2/10 · 8 September 2005]

I love B Grade movies. I have a fondness for them which is pretty deep, but this was F Grade crud.

For some reason i read the back of the DVD cover and thought this may be interesting. Astronauts crash to earth, have to survive against the diseased and megalomaniacal survivors, criminally low budget. Sounds like a winner.

Well winner it was not. Not funny enough to warrant it being "so good it is bad" tag, the diseased people pretty much don't rate a mention, the main characters have no charisma and are pretty annoying, the bad guys are kinda OK, the main bad dude look's like a hobo's Patrick Swayze and has zero acting talent, and his offsider is a lot like Bennet in Commando, the camp, extremely unscary psycho bad dude with a mustache. The story line starts off well but begins to worsen not too soon after the start, and gets worse and worse and then plateaus and then gets worse again. The ending is finally reaches the so bad it is good stage, but if you watch that far into it, as I did, then you are a fool. By the end you are stupider than you were before.

Written, Produced and Directed by the same cretin, this abysmal effort wasted my 2 dollars spent hiring it, and my time watching it. I feel cheated. I want blood.

Santo in the Treasure of Dracula (1969)

Santo is the greatest wrestler/crimefighter/scientist ever

[6/10 · 10 November 2003]

Ok this film is a jumble, but it is fun. It starts off with a long sequence in which a woman travels to her past life with the help of Santo's past life regression machine. The spinning spiral/ conveyor belt sequence where she goes back to her past life is pretty cool. Then after about 20 mins the past life sequence is over, the movie kicks into high gear, and we follow the trials of Santo as he attempts to recover Dracula's treasure to help the needy, and discover the secret of a masked man who seems to follow them and also seems to be evil. There is also a guy who stole RUN DMC's jewelry who is also cool. In short this movie rocks like a panther

Morvern Callar (2002)

I can't believe they made this tripe

[1/10 · 17 September 2003]

There is an old saying "gratuitous nudity does not make up for lack of ideas". This is true in this movie. It starts with the lead lady cradling her boyfriend who has just killed herself, and what happens for the rest of the film? A B S O L U T E L E Y N O T H I N G I fail to see what others do in this movie, there is no dialogue, one is supposed to get that this woman is grieving ( according to the director) but i thought that she was indifferent. There was nothing ( and i mean nothing) to commend this film. It was truly a waste of time. Storyline: none Conversation: None Insights: None One could, in theory, find a bigger waste of time, but this would be difficult if not impossible. this movie failed on every level